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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568714">Maybe Everything That Dies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells'>tortoiseshells</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Marvel Cinematic Universe, WandaVision (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode 1x07: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Gen, Missing Scene, spoilers through 1x07, suspiciously appropriate radio tunes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 22:33:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,397</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568714</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortoiseshells/pseuds/tortoiseshells</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>So, obviously, she starts fiddling with the radio, which is three parts static and one part whatever Wanda thinks ought to be playing in small town New Jersey. There’s the weather, naturally; a few ads for car dealerships and a sale at Wentworth’s; someone running an Agony Aunt talk show (<em>very meta, Wanda</em>); and. Huh. A lot of Bruce Springsteen.</p><p>Or, Darcy, freshly escaped from being the circus escape artist, tries to figure out what's going on outside of Westview, how to explain any of this to Vision, and whether Jimmy Woo prefers Springsteen or Bon Jovi, with mixed results.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Darcy Lewis &amp; Vision, background Wanda Maximoff/Vision</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>87</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Maybe Everything That Dies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>New Jersey’s one of those places (Darcy Lewis thinks) that you’re born with opinions about, but you don’t definitively <strong>Have Opinions About</strong> until you’re from Pennsylvania, or if you’re picking quarters out of the congealed Cherry Coke in your cup-holders to pay for gas while the cute attendant at the Walt Whitman Service Plaza on the Turnpike is losing patience, or if – worst of all – you’re stuck in it.</p><p>(which, for the record: she’s not, that was her college roommate, and – well, <em>shit</em>, now she is.)</p><p>So far, she thinks, there’s worse places – like some under-lit conference room while That Asshole From Stanford asked her another interminable Not-A-Question-But-A-Comment questions, in which he pretended to know everything about her research despite consistently referring to ‘CMBR’ as ‘CBMR’ (and yet that fucker still beat her for a Stark Grant!) – but only just. Her mind feels a little like the worst tequila-<em>cum</em>-cachaça hangover she ever had, except it was her brain and not ice in the blender, and the black-out gaps are just – </p><p>Nope, not going to think about it.</p><p>So that leaves how itchy her circus getup is, or fussing with the dashboard of this Humvee-turned-non-hipster-foodtruck, or talking to the dead guy riding shotgun who she’s pretty certain she – or Westview!Darcy, who’s … not the same person as her? <em>Maybe</em>? – just accused of trying to get in her fake-wool pants. So, obviously, she starts fiddling with the radio, which is three parts static and one part whatever Wanda thinks ought to be playing in small town New Jersey. There’s the weather, naturally; a few ads for car dealerships and a sale at Wentworth’s; someone running an Agony Aunt talk show (<em>very meta, Wanda</em>); and. Huh. A lot of Bruce Springsteen.</p><p>Darcy glances across the console at Vision, who’s been staring off into empty pastureland for a few minutes now, and seems like he’s switched from organizing his questions about what the fuck is happening to wondering what the hell a 10th Avenue Freeze-Out is. Which – good luck, dude. Darcy’s Pops met Dad belting “Hungry Heart” at the Kiel Opera House, back home in the Lou in 1980, and neither of the two ever really got it. One of those The Boss things, you know?</p><p>Come to think of it, why doesn’t a guy who’s probably at least 12% J.A.R.V.I.S. know any Springsteen? What gives, Stark?</p><p>Anyway. Vision’s still not talking, and since it looks like they’re miles from anywhere in a truck that was probably too old to do better than 35mph on VE Day, they can afford a few more minutes’ silence. Because, uh, yeah. This is gonna be one of those Pringles conversations: Once you pop …</p><p>Darcy goes back to humming along with the radio, as the piano dies away into static before another song one picks up, thinking about what’s happening on the outside: did Jimmy and Monica get suckered into WestviewWorld? Did they get her email about Project Cataract? Did they rendezvous with Monica’s aerospace engineering buddy? Is she going to be saved by a next-gen <em>Opportunity</em> rover? She hopes they’re safe out there, she really does – not just because Jimmy and Monica are Westview’s best shot, though that counts for a lot. If it’s just Hayward left standing, Darcy gives it twelve hours, tops, before the Acting-Director decides that vibranium’s pretty tough and it’s a worthwhile gamble to turn this particular patch of Jersey into a crater.</p><p>Monica and Jimmy <em>really</em> had better be okay out there.</p><p>Shoving the thought of being peace-through-superior-firepower-ed into atoms out of her head, and the idea that she has no idea what’s happening to Monica but nothing about the Hex is good news – <em>God, why did she ever even think of calling it the Hex? Was she trying to jinx it? She hasn’t felt this stupid since she unthinkingly ate the Kuai Kuai puffs on June’s desktop tower their first semester as lab-mates.</em> – Darcy fishes around her still-scrambled little grey cells for anything comforting to think about, before hitting on imagining Monica and Jimmy were here to kvetch about the radio like they did the terrible effects in Wanda’s <em>I Love Lucy</em> period. Monica had good taste, definitely better than her dads did; she’d definitely be good for at least one wisecrack about every Springsteen song being about a girl named Mary, or a car, or a factory job, or a car named Mary whose factory job got shipped overseas. And Jimmy –?</p><p>Darcy pulls herself up short. Does Jimmy like Springsteen? Or is he more of a Jon Bon Jovi kind of guy? She’d bet at least one funnel cake – <em>shit, she’s starving, was she chained up to that old truck all night?</em> – that he’s not a Tom Waits dude. (yeah, okay, Waits started out in Cali before moving to New York, but he gets stuck in the ‘New Jersey’ category on the strength of “Jersey Girl”. Her musical classification doesn’t have to be scientific.) She doesn’t mean that as a dig at Jimmy, though! She likes Waits and all, but there’s a time and a place and a <em>mood</em>, and a too-good-to-be-true FBI agent who does card tricks to diffuse weird situations and who yells at the brick shithouses masquerading as S.W.O.R.D. agents when they throw #1 and #2 recycling out doesn’t strike her as the type to really spend much time dwelling on “Warm Beer and Cold Women”. As the song goes, anyway.</p><p>Then again, in the brief, halcyon time that she and Monica and Jimmy had for beer and chips and <em>WandaVision</em> reruns, Jimmy did ‘fess up to going as Eliot Ness for Halloween, and in between arguing about <em>The Untouchables</em> and <em>Twin Peaks</em> and <em>The Big Sleep</em> (and a whole lot of other movies besides), Darcy’d got the feeling Jimmy could probably do a mean Bogey impression. So. Maybe he does have a little bit of “Gun Street Girl” in him. </p><p>Points to the Tom Waits column, she guesses.</p><p>When she gets out of this, she’s going to ask him at the first point she can. Maybe over coffee? Maybe she and Jimmy and Monica can all go sit in a coffee shop somewhere and pretend like this was a normal week in the life, not a wild and increasingly terrifying ride through Wanda Maximoff’s grief and S.W.O.R.D. malfeasance and whatever the hell else is going on in Westview.</p><p>After this is done. After they convince Wanda to let Westview go, and tear down the Hex.</p><p>After, in all likelihood, they convince Wanda to kill Vision. Again.</p><p>Shit. She’s gone back to thinking about the whole Westview problem.</p><p>Vision, being a genius AI/synthezoid/Avenger, notices her wince, and that she’s rubbing her temple –it still feels raw, like him jolting her out of Westview!Darcy had literally burned.  He clears his throat, sighs, and clears his throat again. “Doctor Lewis –?”</p><p>“Yeah?” she says, after he doesn’t continue.</p><p>“I’m dead, aren’t I?”</p><p>Because she’s a highly educated professional, she says “Yeah,” to that, too. But with <em>feeling</em>, and a sad awkward smile that hopefully feels more like an arrangement of white lilies than morbid interest. Thor’s still her favorite Avenger, because Dr. Darcy Lewis <em>is</em> loyal, but – well – </p><p>She thinks of that grainy footage, of Vision more <em>disassembled</em> than just <em>dissected</em>, and the Project Cataract files, and the horrible snakey Nothingness that Wanda Maximoff and the Hex grew all over her consciousness like some kind of sick Virginia Creeper, and the way Wanda’s hands shook in that surveillance video when she brushed one against what had been Vision’s head.</p><p>Darcy likes Vision. She wishes this weren’t happening to him – or any of them.</p><p>“How did I die?” he asks. “<em>Please</em>. I don’t remember.”</p><p>“Anything?”</p><p>He shakes his head, slowly. “Just Wanda.”</p><p>She looks across the console at Vision again, who’s staring at his hands like something’s just slipped his fingers, and because this is Westview of course the music turns suspiciously appropriate, like maybe this isn’t just going to be a conversation, it’s going to be A Scene. Turning down the music until she can barely hear the harmonica, and plaintive <em>“everything dies, baby, that’s a fact”</em>, Darcy pumps the breaks, and sighs.</p><p>“Okay. You know what an Infinity Stone is, right?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>This is going to be <em>great</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>... this was supposed to be ~500 words. whoops.</p><p>Title from Springsteen's "Atlantic City"; please know I mean Darcy's riff on major themes in Springsteen's songbook in the fondest possible way.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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